[inkwellpoetess]

I wanted to share a poem by one of my favorite writers, Evelyn Lau. She is a Canadian writer and was the youngest poet, at age 21, to be nominated for the Governor General's prize for Canadian poetry. She currently has three books of poetry published, You are not who you claim, Oedpial Dreams and In The House of Slaves. The poem I am posting is from Oedipal Dreams, the book that garnered her nomination.


In Search of You in Search of Freud

we talk of emotional corrective experiences
of secondary elaborations during afternoon drives
I listen to your Czechoslovakian analyst's accent
her impressive business card titles, I unfold your money
from cards with endearments inside
maddened by my reluctance to become a composite
of mother and girlfriends and wives
before they tipped over their pedestals
you stop by the side of the road where cups of rain
spill over into sand and mud
you are like one of Freud's
unscrupulous nurses who calm crying children to sleep
by stroking their genitals

nights I squirm over textbooks
punch pillows and slam down dictionaries
recognize you anywhere neurosis is discussed
still I fantasize penetrating the sucken echelons of your profession
still I imagine walking beside you through filters of air
into medical conventions where your aged heroes lecture
with eyes so hungry they have eaten their patients
you forgive them as though they are your parents
write articles to defend them
only in your dreams do they become a a monster tearing
clawing at the bathroom door you hid behind as a child
from your father, only in your dreams
do you tell the truth

we travel across borders with careless guards willing to trust
in the pattern of your tie,
when I touch you, you feel as I imagine a ghost must
clothed, hollow, a chill rush of air
I torture your already subdued body with words
lines thick and rubbery as whips
I long to snap the skeleton of you
to rub your dispassionately analytical eyes into black and bone
uncrowded by thought
smoothed sleepy as genitalia

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Peace!
<><><>TG<><><& gt;